Afghans Try to Make The Government Younger
KABUL, Afghanistan — When Ashraf Ghani, a former World Bank technocrat, took office as the president of Afghanistan in 2014, he promised to put a new generation into leadership positions.
Mr. Ghani wanted to take a country stuck in a hostile geopolitical vise and held together by fragile compromises and transform it into a regional hub for trade between Central Asia and South Asia. Three years later, his coalition has injected educated young people into senior government positions.
But many have struggled against long- entrenched patronage systems. Nepotism still trumps merit for much of the work force. Afghanistan produces 50,000 to 90,000 university graduates each year, but the government generally recruits for only about 15,000 positions each year. In recent months more than 280,000 people applied for 18,000 entry-level government positions.
Once a week, the Civil Service Commission, which regulates the recruitment of a civilian work force of 400,000 people, hears tales of frustration from visitors who are mostly young and educated.
“Your case, unfortunately, is not an exception — often the reality is that hiring happens based on biases,” Nader Nadery, the commission’s chairman, said to a young man turned down for a job. “But we need your patience. Until a new system takes the place of connections and meddling, it will take a little time.”
Those who work closely with Mr. Ghani, 68, say he has an almost blind faith in young people with technical expertise, partly because he struggles to connect with the politics of his own generation. He has entrusted some of his government’s most difficult tasks to some of the youngest officials, many of them political novices.
After earning a master’s degree in the United States, Abdullah Habibzai, a 33-year- old university lecturer in engineering, began writing about the urban chaos of Kabul, the capital. The city was designed for a million people but now houses as many as five million. President Ghani read some of the writings and, in the spring of 2016, asked Mr. Habibzai to meet with him. The president appointed him to be Kabul’s deputy mayor, and within a month Mr. Habibzai was promoted to acting mayor.
Mr. Habibzai started revamping the mayor’s office, replacing 80 percent of the top officials with Western- educated Afghans 25 to 35 years old who operate the city like a start-up. But he said he underestimated the resistance he would face.
The struggles faced by young women in the government have been even more formidable. Last year, Mr. Ghani asked Nargis Nehan, 37, to run the Ministry of Mines and Petroleum. But when
A president wants the educated over the well-connected.
Parliament voted to confirm a list of ministerial appointments, she was the only nominee rejected. “It was heartbreaking,” said Adela Raz, a deputy foreign minister. “She is a strong woman, she is capable and she knows what she is doing.” But, she added, “the majority of the men could not process the fact that this woman should be a minister.”
Ms. Raz was appointed in 2016 when she was 30. The work is draining, she said, with daily indignities. But she said if her generation could persist, it could change the culture of Afghanistan’s government.
“We are going to be crushed, we will be disappointed, we will be hurt,” Ms. Raz said. “I have been, a lot of times. But I pulled myself back, and we will have to continue to do so until we become the majority within the system.”